The Skybound Sea

She tore the poultice away suddenly. Her hand came down in a swift, firm slap against his shoulder. He felt it sting, felt himself wince, knew it should have hurt a lot more. The trembling anger in Asper’s voice suggested she wholly expected it to.

“Don’t you dare compare me to him,” she whispered sharply. “He is a worthless, weeping coward who hides in the filth. I am trying to do what anyone with a conscience would, and offer you the intelligence that would save your life.”

“Coward,” the voice whispered.

“Coward,” he echoed.

“We don’t need her.”

“Don’t need anyone.”

“Pain is nothing to us. We will not be stopped by pain, nor blood, nor cowards.”

“We will not,” he said, “be stopped.”

He felt her eyes boring into the back of his skull, he felt her tremble. He felt her whisper something to herself, something that would make her hard. Something she didn’t believe.

“Do whatever you want, then,” she said, grabbing her medicine bag.

He felt her leave. She looked back, he was certain. She wanted to say something else.

“She won’t.”

“I know,” he said. “She’s harder these days, quieter. Like a rock.”

“Only pretending to be. She’s still as weak and decrepit as the rest. That is her betrayal.”

“Wait . . . she betrays us because she’s weak?”

“A subtle sin, no less deadly. She wishes us to fail because she wants to fail. She refuses to mend our flesh. She tries to hold us back. She tries to infect us with doubt. This is her betrayal. This is what she dies for.”

“Dies . . .” His voice rang with a painful echo, like it was speaking to itself.

“For betraying us,” it snarled. “They all die for that.”

“Yes, they die,” he said. “They all . . . wait, why do they die? They . . . they abandoned us, but—” He winced. “My head hurts. Like it did last night.”

“You speak of it again. Last night was dreamless, dark, restful.”

“No, it wasn’t . . . it was . . .”

“Enough,” it said fiercely. “Ignore it. Ignore them. Listen to us. Listen to what we do. We serve our duty. We find the tome.”

“But my head . . .”

“Pain is nothing to us. Whatever happens, we will persevere. We will harden in ways that she cannot.”

Lenk found his eyes drifting to the fire, to the smoldering remains of the dismembered netherling, to the hilt of the dagger jutting out from the stones surrounding it. He saw it, glowing white with heat.

“Pain is nothing,” he whispered.

“Pain is nothing,” the voice agreed.

“There is no pain,” he said, rising up. “There will be no pain.”

“I did not say that.”

“And if you’re not lying, if there is no pain . . .” He walked toward the fire, hand extended.

“I didn’t—” For the first time, the voice stammered. “What are you doing?”

His fingers wrapped around the hilt, felt the heat. He pressed it to his shoulder, and felt it burn.

“STOP!”

Bralston never heard the sound of his word.

He saw it instead.

He watched his word leave his throat. He watched his voice fly out on a gurgle and a thick red splash. He watched his life spatter softly upon the earth and settle in quivering beads.

He watched the blade, never having seen it as it struck. He watched as it glistened with his life. He watched as the murderer wiped it clean, pulled it back into its hiding place in his glove.

Like it was just another murder. Common.

And the murderer stood before him, already dusting off the earth from his body, the dark blood indistinguishable upon his black leathers. He looked at Bralston, weaponless, clean, as though he had never added another body to his debt.

All that remained to speak against him was Bralston. And Bralston’s voice lay in a thick puddle on the sand.

No.

He collapsed to his knees.

No, damn it.

He swayed, vision darkening.

Not like this.

He felt himself teeter forward.

Anacha, we were going to—

“Imone.”

He heard the word as he felt the hands steady him. He looked up, saw the murderer’s clean face, saw the murderer’s dead stare. The man removed his glove, pressing it against the bright red smile in Bralston’s throat. Not enough to save him, just enough for him to listen.

“Say it,” the murderer said.

Bralston gurgled.

“She wasn’t the Houndmistress. She had a name. Imone. Say it.”

“Im . . . Ihmooghnay,” Bralston croaked.

The murderer stared at him. Almost insulted that a man with a cut throat should slur.

“She had a city,” the murderer said. “She had a name.” He stood up, let Bralston topple to the earth and splash in his own life. “One that should be spoken on the lips of dying men.”

He winced, as though he only now became aware of what he had done, as he stared at the just and moral choice leaking out onto the sand. He turned away, the sight too much to bear.

“Sorry,” he said.

He turned and walked into the forest, stopping only to pluck up his dagger and the hat, pitifully still, that had been pinned beneath its blade. Bralston raised his hand, trying to summon thought from a head draining, trying to summon voice from the earth. Enough for a spell, enough for a curse, enough for anything.

“You . . .” he rasped, “you . . . you . . .”

“I know,” Denaos said.

The man ducked, vanishing into the underbrush. He was gone long before Bralston clutched at the spellbook at his hip. Long before Bralston cried out as he grasped at his leaking life.

Long before Bralston could see nothing but darkness.

The smell of ripe flesh cooking cloyed her nostrils.

One breath later, she heard him scream.

She whirled about. Through the smoke and the scent of char, she could see him. Bits of him.

His eyes were wide and yellow with the reflection of the heat. His face was stretched with agony, looking as though it might snap off and fly into the underbrush at any moment.

She rushed toward him, fist up and slamming against his jaw. The knife came off with pink strips of flesh curling into thin, gray wisps as it fell to the ground and sizzled into the sand.

Of all the oaths she had taken and hymns she had recited to Talanas, she was fairly certain she had, at one point or another, sworn not to do what she just did. But the Healer would have to understand, if He existed at all.

That worry would have to wait. Prayers and whatever other blows she had to complement the last, too. She made a point not to forget to deliver them, though.

Right now, her eyes were on the mass of molten flesh that bubbled like an undercooked pastry with a viscous, red-tinged filling. The sutures of gut were seared into his flesh, veining his shoulder in a tangled mass of black atop a cherry red and visibly throbbing skin. A parasite would have been a more accurate description, a fleshy tick gorged with blood that twitched as it drank deeply.

Proper metaphors were hard to come up with as he writhed in her grip and screamed in her ears.

“That hurt,” he gasped. Tears fled from the corners of his eyes, seeped into the twisted contours of his grimace. He reached up to grab his shoulder, fought to rise to his feet. “That really hurt.”

“You’re kidding,” she muttered. One hand came down firmly upon his bare chest, sending him to the earth and holding him there. The other wrenched his hand away from the wound. “Hold still.”

Closer up, it ceased to be a metaphor and she saw it for what it was: sealed up in a mass of ugly melted flesh, a seeping, weeping pustule begging for any number of infections dying to come in. The fury with which she sighed would have been better expended on cursing or punching.

“Should I even ask?” she snarled.

“Why didn’t you stop me?” he replied, eyes shut tight. “You should have stopped me.”

“What was I supposed to do?” She recoiled from the accusation, and not just because of the oddity of it all.

“You said there would be no pain.” His shrieking died, consumed in an angry growl. “You said there would be nothing.”

“I . . . I never did!”

“Oh, you didn’t expect that?” His laugh was a black thing that crawled up her spine and made itself cozy at the base of her neck. “So, you don’t know everything?”

“Who are you talking to?” she pressed, her voice fervent. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Is it not yet obvious?”

A man’s voice came from behind her. Not the voice she wanted to hear. Not the man she wanted standing over her.

“He’s done something amazingly stupid again,” Denaos muttered. With a rather insulting lack of immediacy, he leaned over her shoulder, gingerly holding a broad-rimmed leather hat in his hands. “So, Lenk . . .” He paused, smacking his lips. “Why?”

“Not important,” Lenk muttered. “Just fix it.”

He glanced from the knife, thin blobs of flesh still cooking on its blade, to Lenk. “Friend, considering what you’ve just done, I don’t think there is a way to fix you.”

“Shut up, shut up,” Asper growled. She frowned at the wound. “Just . . . just get me my bag. Hurry.”

To his credit, Denaos did snatch up her bag with haste. It was a credit squandered, as ever, by what came out of his mouth next.

“It seems as though haste is kind of self-defeating, really,” he said, holding it out to her. “I mean, he’s never going to learn if you just keep fixing him up.”

She couldn’t spare a glare for him, nor anything more than an outstretched hand. “Charbalm.”

“What’s that?”

“The goopy gray stuff. I’ve got a little bit left.”

“A little bit doesn’t sound like enough,” Denaos said, rooting around in the bag haphazardly.

“It won’t be,” she snapped. “But it doesn’t matter. We’re in the middle of a Gods damned jungle. It’ll be a miracle if he isn’t already infected.”

He pulled a small wooden jar from the bag, flipping the latch on its lid and handing it to her. She poured some of the thick, syrupy liquid into her hand before snarling and hurling the jar at him.

“I said charbalm, moron! This is mutterbye! A digestive.”

“They’re not labeled!” the rogue protested, ably sidestepping the projectile.

“I said gray and goopy. How much more description do you need, you imbecile?” The insult was punctuated with a frustrated slap on Lenk’s shoulder and, a breath later, the scream that followed and sent her wincing at him. “Sorry.”

Denaos muttered something under his breath as he rooted through the jars, swabs, and vials, tossing each one upon the ground before producing something and thrusting it at her. Satisfied, she scraped out a thick paste and rubbed it upon the burn wound. Lenk eased into her arms, the salve apparently soothing some of the pain.

“Not enough,” she muttered.

“Why not?” Lenk asked.

“Possibly because I used it all trying to fix another idiot’s mistake weeks ago.” She sighed, spreading the salve with delicate precision. “Still, assuming bedrest and coverage, I can probably keep the infection down until we reach the mainland.”

“Can’t you use something local?” Denaos asked. “A root? An herb?”

“Charbalm requires more refinery than I can do with a mortar and pestle. You don’t find it outside of apothecaries.”

“Surely, there’s something . . .”

“If I say there isn’t, then there isn’t.” Each word was spat between clenched teeth at the rogue. “You need tools to make charbalm: distillation, mincing, rare herbs and roots . . . other healy stuff.”

“Healy stuff,” Denaos said flatly. “You know, between that and your enlightened description of the stuff as gray and goopy, I’m not sure I feel—”

“I don’t give a winged turd what you think,” she roared at him. “I am a PRIESTESS of TALANAS, you ASS. I know what I’m doing. Now give me a Gods damned bandage and then hurl yourself off a cliff.”

A man, quite possibly insane, lay burned and wounded in her arms. Another man, quite possibly dangerous, scowled at her with suspiciously dark stains on his tunic and another man’s hat in his hands. It was not, in any sense, the sort of situation where she should allow herself a smug, proud smile.

But, then again, she had just rendered Denaos speechless.

“What did you learn?” Lenk asked from Asper’s arms, voice rasping.

“About what?” Denaos growled, rifling through the bag, all humor vanished.

“You’ve had a day with the netherling. What did you find out about them? Jaga? Anything?”

“Not a lot, thanks for asking,” Denaos replied. “She’s as helpful as you’d expect a woman capable of reversing the positions of your head and your scrotum to be.”

“You’ve gotten better out of worse.” Lenk’s voice was strained with distant agony as he shrugged off Asper and staggered to his feet.

“I’ve had time to do that. Time and tools.”

“You’ve got a knife and you’ve had a day. What you got from Rashodd—”

“It’s not that simple.”

“And yet you—”

“It’s not that simple.” The narrow of his eye left nothing so light as a suggestion that not talking about it would be wise. A threat would be more accurate. “We won’t find anything useful from her.”

There had been times when Lenk’s voice commanded, times when his gaze intimidated. Despite size, despite injury, Asper knew both she and Denaos looked to him for reasons beyond those. But never did his voice inspire cringe and never did his gaze cause skin to crawl than when he spoke as he did now.

“Kill her.”

Denaos sighed, rubbed his eyes. “Is that necessary?”

“Well, I don’t know, Denaos. When it comes to killing women who are capable of reversing the positions of your head and your scrotum, is it more necessary or practical?”

“What, exactly, makes this one any different from the others you’ve killed?” Asper asked, rising up and dusting off her robes. The gaze she fixed on Denaos was less scornful than he deserved; perhaps she simply had to know.

“It’s complicated,” the rogue offered, not bothering to look at either of them.

“It is not,” Lenk insisted, his voice cold. “We get the tome. We kill anyone who is in our way.”

“She’s tied to a chair in a hut.”

“She’s dangerous.”

“She’s not going anywhere.”

“Not yet. Not ever.” Lenk narrowed his eyes. “No loose ends. Our duty depends on it.”

When Denaos looked up into the man’s stare, his own was weary. His voice dribbled out of his mouth on a sigh.

“Yeah. Fine. What’s one more, right?”

He flipped the wide-brimmed hat in his fingers, tossed it to Lenk. The young man caught it, looked it over, furrowed his brow.

“This is Bralston’s,” he noted.

“And now it’s yours.” He slipped on a smile. “It’s just that easy.”

He turned, disappeared into the forest. Lenk stared at the hat in his hands for a moment before turning to Asper.

“Fix whatever else you need to fix with my shoulder,” he said. “I leave in an hour.”

“And Denaos?”

“Stays here with you and Dread. We have a better chance of slipping in with fewer people.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Lenk didn’t seem to hear. Or care. She told herself that was rather a wise attitude to have for the rogue. The less she cared, the better. Less chance of him failing, then.

That was a wise attitude. Reasonable.

She tried to convince herself of it as she plucked up her bag and produced a bandage and swab. She looked at Lenk as he knelt down to collect his shirts and the agitated red mass upon his shoulder, glistening with too little salve.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because,” his voice was gentle, “I wanted to see if it would hurt.”

SIX

HALLOWED, HUMBLE,

SOAKED IN BLOOD

He placed a foot upon salt-slick stone. Barely more than the scuff of boot on granite. The silence heard him and came out of a thousand little shadows and pools of water to greet him with resounding echoes.

A thousand footfalls greeted him in the gapingly empty hall, as though by sheer repetition the massive chamber could pretend there was life in its depths. It committed itself to the illusion with every step he took, each echo rising and waiting for him to speak and be repeated a thousand times and complete the deception.

Sheraptus was not in the habit of indulging anyone, let alone stone.

His nostrils quivered, agitated. He was not about to indulge them, either, by placing cloth to nose and masking the stench. He shut his eyes, forced down his distaste and drew in a sharp breath.

The air sat leaden in his nose, heavy with many things as he continued down the great, empty hall. Sea was first among them and with it salt, acrid and foul. Dormant ash was there, in great presence. And something else. Something familiar.

His boot struck something and he stumbled forward. Pulling the black hem of his robe away exposed a pale, hairless face staring up at him with lifeless black eyes and a stagnant aroma wafting from a mouth filled with needle teeth.

No. His crown burned upon his brow, smoldering with thought. Not that.

But close. The scent of death, heaviest and most pungent, was not making it particularly easy to sense out that enigmatic aroma. Understandable, he thought, given all the corpses.

He hadn’t been at Irontide when it all happened, when his warriors had stormed the fortress to retrieve the tome and kill the demonic leader known as the Deepshriek. As he swept a glance about the hollow chamber, though, he absently wished he had been; he certainly wouldn’t have left all these corpses about.

They lay where they had fallen, white and purple, frogman and netherling: gored, cut, rent, stabbed, impaled, trampled, ripped, strangled, drowned, broken, and decapitated. They swelled only barely from salt water. Gulls had not come to feed upon them, as though they were too unclean even for vermin.

He could understand why they hadn’t feasted upon the frogmen, of course, demon-tainted filth that they were. He felt vaguely insulted that his warriors were similarly untouched, as though there were something wrong with them.